• AFFECT (emotion) AND BEHAVIOR ( the result of motivation)

Your feelings are obviously important to you but:

What is Affect?

• complex /many components : » physiological responses (autonomic nervous system) » cognitive events » sensory input » behavioral correlates

What is the Role of emotion?1. Some theorist argue that; Feelings are mere epiphenomena of motivation and may only serve as cues to facilitate social communication ( Darwin)

consider that most people do not have a "poker face," and we generally find a person's emotional response to be obvious.

-Knowing how someone feels will help us evaluate how they will act.

2. To Motivate behavior; In contrast, other theorists argue that affect is a primary motivator of behavior

Affective state primarily may serve to produce behavioral responses and shape behavior (emotion may be reinforcing) , Consequently then affect may be motivational in nature.

(Although it may be overly simplistic, we will take the perspective here that emotion and motivation are interlinked and consider them as one general concept).

HOW MANY EMOTIONS ARE THERE? A question that raises controversy and has no universally

agreed upon answer.• Proposed Basic Emotions Basis for Inclusion

• Plutchik• Acceptance, anger, anticipation, disgust, joy, fear, sadness, surprise

Relation to adaptive biological processes

• Arnold• Anger, aversion, courage, dejection, desire, despair, fear, hate, hope, love, sadness

Relation to action tendencies • Ekman, Friesen, and Ellsworth• Anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise Universal facial expressions

• Frijda• Desire, happiness, interest, surprise, wonder, sorrow Forms of action readiness

• Gray• Rage and terror, anxiety, joy Hardwired

• Izard• Anger, contempt, disgust, distress, fear, guilt, • interest, joy, shame, surprise Hardwired

• James• Fear, grief, love, rage Bodily involvement

• McDougall• Anger, disgust, elation, fear, subjection, Relation to instincts • tender-emotion, wonder

• Mowrer• Pain, pleasure Unlearned emotional states

• Oatley and Johnson-Laird• Anger, disgust, anxiety, happiness, sadness Do not require propositional

content

• Panksepp• Expectancy, fear, rage, panic Hardwired • fear, joy, shame, surprise

• Tomkins• Anger, interest, contempt, disgust, distress, Density of neural firing

• Watson• Fear, love, rage Hardwired

• Weiner and Graham• Happiness, sadness Attribution independent Basic

Emotions

Historical theories of emotion vs common sense:

• James-Lange theory: – A visceral experience (gut reaction) is labeled as an

emotional state. » We have some autonomic reaction to stimuli. We

observe these physical sensations and label them as feelings.

James thought that the body acted like a sounding board, struck by neural impulses to create the waves of change that could then be

sensed by the brain as a quality of emotional feeling. Thus, the varieties and shades of emotion are as infinite as the bodily patterns that neural

action can create.

• EXAMPLE: You are walking down a dark alley late at night.  You hear footsteps behind you and you begin to tremble, your heart beats faster, and your breathing deepens.  You notice these physiological changes and interpret them as your body's preparation for a fearful situation.  You then experience fear.

•  •

Hohmann (1966) A Test Of the James-Lange Theory?

• Hypothesis: You need the visceral body in order to feel emotions.

• Test: Interview people with high vs. low spinal cord injuries

High spinal cord injury:

“Sometimes I act angry... But it doesn’t have the heat to it that it used to. It’s a mental kind of anger.”

Hohman, 1966, pp. 150-151 (Carlson)

Support for James-Lange Theory

– The range of emotions is apparently much broader and more complex than the range of visceral reactions.

• Nonetheless, recent advances in physiological measurements (eg, PET scans) suggest the physiological correlates of emotional states are more specific than once thought.

-Even though James predicted that loss of bodily sensation (eg, through spinal injury) would depress emotions, this is not fully supported (some people report an increase in emotional intensity).

The viscera are largely unresponsive and react relatively slowly (i.e. - we often 'feel' the emotion before the physiological changes have occurred.)

– Visceral responses appear the same no matter what the reported emotion.

• Although James proposed immediate visceral responses create emotion,• recent research indicates that some emotional changes may take a long time to develop.

Problems for James-Lange?

New Support for the James-Lange?

• Theory? Ekman and Friesens’ Facial Feedback Hypothesis:

• Facial expressions appear to be innate. – People of all cultures show six basic emotional

expressions: happiness, sadness, surprise, fear, anger, and disgust.

– Even the blind and deaf smile and laugh when they are happy.

Ekman and Friesens’ Facial Feedback Hypothesis (Renewed support for the

James-Lange theory?)

• Universally recognized facial expressions

The Face may actually be an organ of visceral function

The Facial Feedback Hypothesis and the James Lange theory

• The facial feed back hypothesis holds that facial expressions may be crucial to the experience of an emotional state, and may even cause emotional reactions.

– Ekman found that actors moving their faces according to explicit instructions showed physiological responses appropriate to their facial expressions.

– Strack (1988) found that people who held a pencil between their teeth rated cartoons funnier than those who held it between their lips.

Ekman’s Facial Feedback Theory Problems?

Facial expressions have an effect on self-reported anger and happiness

• Response to Facial Posing are not especially strong

• ACTORS?...feel?

• Masking emotion should lead to suppression of emotion…but this is not a clear result of masking.

Cannon-Bard theory:

– When presented with a stimulus, the thalamus activates both a physiological reaction and an emotional response.

– The thalamus simultaneously signals the autonomic nervous system and the cerebral cortex.

• EXAMPLE:  You are walking down a dark alley late at night.  You hear footsteps behind you and you begin to tremble, your heart beats faster, and your breathing deepens.  At the same time as these physiological changes occur you also experience the emotion of fear.

Problems for Cannon-Bard?

• The Cannon-Bard theory argues that we experience physiological and emotional arousal at the same time, – but gives no attention to the role of thoughts (interpretation) or

behavioral responses.  

• Cannon argued that the Thalamus was the emotion center of the brain, – but we now know that there are many brain areas involved in

emotionality…esp. the amygdala

•  

cognitive-appraisal theories

– Schachter-Singer theory (the "two factor theory)

– A stimulus causes physiological arousal; this is considered in light of environmental and social cues.

– The arousal is then cognitively interpreted as an emotional state based on the cues.

» In other words, the environment, particularly the behavior of other people, is used to explain the physiological state.

– Events significant to one's own well-being are particularly important in determining emotional response.

–

StimulusPhysiological

Reaction

Cerebral Cortex

Emotion

3. Cognitive Theory (formerly Schacter-Singer Theory)

Environmental Cues

EXAMPLE:  You are walking down a dark alley late at night.  You hear footsteps behind you and you begin to tremble, your heart beats faster, and your breathing deepens. 

Upon noticing this arousal you realize that you are walking down a dark alley by yourself.  This behavior is dangerous and therefore you feel the emotion of fear.

The Schachter theory: The classic “supproxin study

• Hypothesis: The same bodily reaction will cause one emotion in one situation, and another emotion in a different situation. – Give people a dose of adrenaline;– Put them in different situations;– What happens?

FEAR LOVE

The "Suproxin" experiment:

• Men were given epinephrine, which causes sympathetic arousal. The subject was either informed or uninformed as to the drugs effects.

• A confederate behaved in one of two ways: happy or angry.

• The subjects responded accordingly (but only when they had not been told that the drug would cause an increase in heart rate, etc).

• Schachter & Singer 1962:

The Schachter theory

VERY ANGRY!

VERY EXCITED!

(know what pill does)

Least angry

Least excited

Medium angry!

(didn’t take pill)

Medium excited!

Lazarus Theory 

Lazarus Theory argues that a thought (cognition) must come before any emotion or physiological arousal.  In other words,

you must first think about your situation before you can experience an emotion.

 EXAMPLE:  You are walking down a dark alley late at night. 

You hear footsteps behind you and you think it may be a mugger so you begin to tremble, your heart beats faster, and

your breathing deepens and at the same time experience fear.

 

Problems for Appraisal Theories?

• Cognitive appraisal of a situation is necessary for the experience of emotion and Behavioral responses??

– many studies now indicate that we may be emotionally affected and motivated without awareness.

Dual Process Theory• Two primary pathways from the thalamus mediate

the processing of cognition, emotional valence and behavioral response.

• The thalamus projects sensory information to the Amygdala first ( fast pathway).

• The thalamus also projects information to the cerebral cortices where deliberate/rationale information processing occurs ( slow pathway) and intentional/conscious responses may be produced.

Dual Process• The Amygdala initiates fast

(automatic/unconscious?) “affective” responses through efferent pathways to the hypothalamus and other lower brain regions.

• The Amygdala also relays info to the frontal lobes where deliberate response processing may be influenced unconsciously ( cognitive bias?)

Dual Process Theories

Cognitive Bias?

• Underlying motivations Bias cognitive processes.

• appear to exist and influence a broad range of cognitive functions from attention, memory and perceptual interpretations (e.g., stereotypes), to decision making and behavioral responses (Bargh& Chartrand, 1999).

cognitive bias

automatic, effortless, relatively fast, independent from consciousness and intention

Reber, 1993; Remillard and Clark, 2001; Hasher & Zacks, 1979; Schneider, Dumais, & Shiffrin, 1984; Sherman, Gawronski, Gonsalkorale, Hugenberg, Allen and Groom, 2008; but see Okon-Singer, Hadas, Tzelgov, Joseph, Henik, Avishai, 2007.

I

Cog bias

• Major sources of evidence support this theory (see MacCleod, 2004 for partial review).

• Typically studied through implicit test procedures such as the :

• Modified (emotional) Stroop test• …many other test procedures have been used

The Stroop Test procedure:

• Subjects required to respond to each stimuli among a long list of stimuli (typically word stimuli) as rapidly as possible based on the color of the words’ font color. There are a number of variations but in a simple representation of this task subjects may be asked to press one button if a word is presented with a blue font and a different button if the word has a red font.

• Most of the stimuli have relatively neutral motivational valence, but some of the stimuli are intended to be motivationally salient.

• Eg…

• DICTIONARY

• Subject presses the “1” key as fast as possible

• MURDER

• Subject presses the “3” key as fast as possible

Interpretation of Modified Stroop RTs..

• Though the task instructions are to ignore the word and respond only to the color,

• Reliable differences in RT are thought to reflect the relative attention-grabbing power of the word meaning that are processed Automatically.

Such tests have revealed reliable differences in RT for stimuli that relate to

inferred motivational states across samples of people with known motivational

problems:

– Cognitive Bias has been indicated in subjects with clinically diagnosed

• Depression• Anxiety• Drug dependence• Eating disorders studies….• And for subjects with other obvious motivational tendencies

such as inmates incarcerated for violent offenses• etc

– Not as well studied in “normal populations”